Her latest research presented this week at an international conference on dementia in Washington, D.C., found that getting heart rates up for as little as three hours a week improved the test scores of people with mild cognitive impairment. Her subjects were older adults who had already experienced problems like memory loss caused by mini-strokes — common occurrences in the second half ...

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Walking briskly enough to raise your heart rate is good for body and brain.File photo by Ian Lindsay

Physiotherapist and brain researcher Teresa Liu-Ambrose is giving me a lot of hope.

Teresa Liu-Ambrose

Her latest research presented this week at an international conference on dementia in Washington, D.C., found that getting heart rates up for as little as three hours a week improved the test scores of people with mild cognitive impairment. Her subjects were older adults who had already experienced problems like memory loss caused by mini-strokes — common occurrences in the second half of life that usually go unnoticed.

I’ve seen the results of mini-strokes — properly called transient ischemic attacks or TIAs — in my family. It’s something that sneaks up on you and you can’t quite put your finger on at first. Then poor logic starts to replace sharp thinking. Bills don’t make sense anymore. Writing a cheque becomes a challenge. The person you knew — or perhaps the person you were — is no longer as capable.

While Alzheimer’s disease takes the lead villain’s role when we let our worst fears about aging play out in our minds, vascular dementia — cognitive failings that result from a lack of blood flow to brain cells — lurks right behind. It’s the second most common cause of dementia.

Liu-Ambrose focused on participants with vascular dementia because she says it could be the most treatable. By improving oxygen flow to the brain, there’s a chance of compensating for the circulation lost from tiny blockages.

Filed under: To Your Health]]>http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/07/24/moving-your-body-is-free-and-it-beats-paying-for-brain-games/feed/0erinellis1Walking briskly enough to raise your heart rate is good for your brain and body. File photo by Ian LindsayTeresa Liu-AmbrosePetition takes on photoshopped images in women’s magazines. Can reality win?http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/04/20/petition-takes-on-photoshopped-images-in-womens-magazines-can-reality-win/
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/04/20/petition-takes-on-photoshopped-images-in-womens-magazines-can-reality-win/#commentsTue, 21 Apr 2015 04:38:32 +0000http://blogs.vancouversun.com/?p=180295The campaign is called Less Is More and it’s the latest project of the Vancouver-based website RawBeautyTalks. More than 4,500 people have already signed on to a petition calling for an end to unrealistic images of women’s bodies in glossy magazines. Less Is More creator Erin Treloar wants to see 10,000 by the end of this month.

It’s an admirable cause, but I’m not sure that nicely asking the publishers of Elle, Glamour and Cosmopolitan, ...

]]>The campaign is called Less Is More and it’s the latest project of the Vancouver-based website RawBeautyTalks. More than 4,500 people have already signed on to a petition calling for an end to unrealistic images of women’s bodies in glossy magazines. Less Is More creator Erin Treloar wants to see 10,000 by the end of this month.

It’s an admirable cause, but I’m not sure that nicely asking the publishers of Elle, Glamour and Cosmopolitan, among others, to tone down the touch-ups on their covers is going to get very far. As long as those magazines — and their advertisers — are successfully selling dreams of artificially enhanced beauty, the fake fronts will continue.

Treloar is convinced that retouched magazine images don’t merely grind down the confidence of young women, but also contribute to eating disorders plaguing North America. It’s something she knows about from the inside after spending three months in hospital as a 17-year-old, gravely ill at 89 pounds.

“My eating disorder was largely perpetuated by this image of beauty that’s portrayed in the media — it’s all over the place — and wanting to achieve that standard and meet that expectation.”

She recovered, started to manage a Pilates studio and is expecting her first child this summer.

Fiona Forbes

RawBeauty is a non-profit organization and Treloar’s labour of love. She hopes it will help young women to think twice about buying into the glossy images they see. Her target audience is 17-to-35-year-olds, women who are still forming their identities and searching for their place in the world.

Messages from people who have signed on to the #LessIsMore petition include parents who feel powerless against the onslaught of manufactured images from the multi-billion-dollar beauty industry.

“I’ve had fathers say they worry about where their daughters are going to find confidence in this world.”

The other side of Treloar’s website is RawBeautyTalks, a series of Q and As from over 200 women from around the world who talk about their lives and inspirations. It includes hundreds of photos — all without makeup. Several high-profile people are in the mix, like Fiona Forbes of The Rush on Shaw TV in Vancouver; interior designer Jillian Harris, the host of HGTV’s Love It or List It; and Jaycelyn Brown, keyboardist for Vancouver-based indie rock band Said the Whale.

Jaycelyn Brown

Jillian Harris

Treloar says the only criticism she’s heard is from readers who think there’s little diversity on the website. That can change quickly if more people sign on.

#IAmEnough campaign

Treloar calls RawBeauty an “advocate for transparency in media” and I’m happy to report that The Vancouver Sun bans photoshopping on all images taken by our photographers.

“I just kept feeling that we need to have a bigger conversation about beauty and the pressures that we feel — as men and women — and the pressures that we receive from the media,” she says. “What led me to start RawBeauty was my own personal desire to help women and girls find the confidence I had found in ways that didn’t involve dieting and exercise and shopping and makeup.”

It was inspiring to hear high-profile sports trainer Peter Twist tell me that his mother didn’t exercise much when he was growing up, but is now a regular gym-goer as she closes in on 80.
Here’s the full story with advice from Twist, the exuberant international trainer Krista Popowych and relative newcomer, Jessica Slonski, who runs a two-year-old rehab Pilates studio in Yaletown.

It was inspiring to hear high-profile sports trainer Peter Twist tell me that his mother didn’t exercise much when he was growing up, but is now a regular gym-goer as she closes in on 80.
Here’s the full story with advice from Twist, the exuberant international trainer Krista Popowych and relative newcomer, Jessica Slonski, who runs a two-year-old rehab Pilates studio in Yaletown.

I’m squarely onside with the subject of my story in Saturday’s paper. Fifty-two-year-old Susan Anthony has breast cancer that’s spread to one of her lungs. Odds are good that it will eventually take her life. She’s bold and funny in person and wants people to know ...

]]>No one wants to slam a good cause — particularly when it has to do with a potentially fatal disease, but I’d like to admit to battle fatigue.

I’m squarely onside with the subject of my story in Saturday’s paper. Fifty-two-year-old Susan Anthony has breast cancer that’s spread to one of her lungs. Odds are good that it will eventually take her life. She’s bold and funny in person and wants people to know that she, too, is sick of the language of war.

The immense success of breast cancer awareness month every October continues to push not only a shocking array of pink products (including drill bits for oil exploration!), but a lot of slogans with a militaristic tone:

Anthony wonders what happens when we don’t win that battle. Having metastatic disease is bad enough without the added label of loser, or perhaps “non-winner” as she likes to say.

Like most people, I have friends who died of breast cancer: two young mothers who never saw the age of 40 and left young children behind decades ago. That was before the current trend of putting “lost a valiant battle with cancer” in obituaries, a practice I’m certain has been influenced by the rise in popular breast cancer awareness campaigns. These descriptions imply that a greater effort might have paid off, allowing these women to watch their kids grow up if they’d somehow tried harder. It’s something most people with cancer would dispute.

Beyond the language of these campaigns is what’s behind them. Look at the sponsors of almost any breast cancer organization’s website and a list of pharmaceutical companies will appear. Most are registered charities that warmly welcome these donations, but there’s no doubt that drug manufacturers also hope to increase sales with added demand for their products. One way to do that is to make consumers aware of drugs in the pipeline that may not yet be approved for sale or are not covered under provincial health care plans. If patients clamour for the latest drug, it may speed approval by regulators.

There is much good being done by groups that help women cope with illness, recovery and relapse. But not campaigns that demand the latest weapons to combat cancer yet blame front-line soldiers when they fail.
Email: eellis@vancouversun.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erin.ellis.526#
Twitter: @erinellis

Leyanne, I was told, liked to run her life her way. Solicitous nurses in palliative care — a medical service for the dying that ...

]]>Talking to the family of Leyanne Burchell in preparation for this feature story on assisted suicide, the conversation kept returning to loss of control and the fear it creates. It struck me as a central point of disagreement between supporters and opponents of changes to Canada’s laws on doctor-assisted death.

Leyanne, I was told, liked to run her life her way. Solicitous nurses in palliative care — a medical service for the dying that she tried briefly — asked her too many questions and gave her too many instructions.

Ultimately, she asked for help from right-to-die activist Evelyn Martens in 2002 because she wanted to be in her home when she took her own life with a drug overdose — and have someone there to make sure it worked.

Leyanne Burchell before she became ill with incurable stomach cancer

But faith-based interveners in front of the Supreme Court of Canada on Wednesday will argue that no human has the right to help someone die. A written presentation from the Catholic Health Care Coalition previously submitted to the high court quotes Pope John Paul II from his Encyclical Letter on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life:
“Suicide is always as morally objectionable as murder. […] To concur with the intention of another person to commit suicide and to help in carrying it out through so-called “assisted suicide” means to cooperate in, and at times to be the actual perpetrator of, an injustice which can never be excused, even if it is requested.

“Even when not motivated by a selfish refusal to be burdened with the life of someone who is suffering, euthanasia must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing “perversion” of mercy.”

Yet I can’t see Leyanne Burchell’s death in that light. She had the option presented by anti-euthanasia groups: palliative care or palliative sedation. The difference between doctor-assisted death by a barbiturate overdose and end-of-life sedation — essentially keeping the patient asleep until they expire naturally — is largely a matter of dose. In Leyanne’s case, she chose to stay at home — conscious until the end — rather than draw out her inevitable death in public.

Several told me poignant personal stories about how integral these workers were to keeping their ailing loved ones at home. The happiest were those who had taken control of hiring the workers, despite the difficulty of managing such complex task.

But a letter from Ron Watson ...

]]>Readers sent me a number of thoughtful messages following my recent feature on home care — from both the families of clients and the workers who tended to them.

Several told me poignant personal stories about how integral these workers were to keeping their ailing loved ones at home. The happiest were those who had taken control of hiring the workers, despite the difficulty of managing such complex task.

But a letter from Ron Watson , former CEO of a non-profit society called Surrey and White Rock Home Care, stood out for covering a lot of bases.

Watson is a regular letter-to-the-editor writer on health care issues and has been critical in the past of cuts to government funding in the early 2000s that he says made it impossible to keep his society going. Homes once visited by staff working for a non-profit are now served by larger, for-profit companies contracted by local health authorities.

“I’m not in favour of it,” Watson said in a later telephone interview. “I’m sure as heck no NDPer, but the government has allowed private industry to take over home care and long-term care.”

Although high turnover among home care workers is a problem acknowledged in government reports, Watson says companies have little motivation to fix it because it’s cheaper to hire new workers at the bottom end of the pay scale.

Home care worker Karen Michelle Marquez agrees. A foreign trained nurse, she said in an e-mail that she started working for a company in Richmond for $12 an hour, but found it impossible to get by with the unpredictable hours she was offered. Now she’s a live-in caregiver and can count on earning $125 per day.

“We are, by far, more competent, more knowledgeable and more efficient in providing outstanding care for our seniors. I feel to a point our competence are being abused by home care companies because of the low pay grade. We give medications, give advanced care and provide support that are above and beyond what is expected from us. We are considered casual employees even when we are doing full-time hours,” she said.

Yvonne Leduc wrote to say she earned $19 an hour working for a health authority and was happy with the money, but not heavy workloads and the fact that as a casual worker she had no benefits or sick days.

She says it’s poor working conditions that make people give up their home care jobs. High injury rates among workers are due to rushing through their jobs, trying to lift their clients rather than letting them move at their own slow pace.

“And of course, the government keeps contracting out bits and pieces of public home care: in some places they have contracted out geographical areas, in other places, they have contracted out the evening and night hours, or certain clients. These contractors make their profit by paying lower wages,” Leduc writes.

“I am my own one-person home care business now and I am much happier.”

I’ll be writing more about seniors care in the coming months. It’s an issue that is only becoming more pressing as demand rises.

I tried not to take it personally when the padded panties arrived in my mailbox at work. This could happen to other reporters … right?

The accompanying bumph says DRC Underwear (named for the initials of the three women behind the made-in-Quebec product) can absorb urine from incontinence in a regular-looking pair of panties. They’re designed to help women who are having a leaky time due to pregnancy, childbirth, weight gain, hormonal changes or even

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I tried not to take it personally when the padded panties arrived in my mailbox at work. This could happen to other reporters … right?

The accompanying bumph says DRC Underwear (named for the initials of the three women behind the made-in-Quebec product) can absorb urine from incontinence in a regular-looking pair of panties. They’re designed to help women who are having a leaky time due to pregnancy, childbirth, weight gain, hormonal changes or even playing sports.

The young designers Raquel Tulk and Chanelle O’Shea have won awards for their ideas. (And were featured entrepreneurs on the French version of the TV show Dragons’ Den where they found a key investor and partner.) That’s all great. But why send them to me?

Sure, I’ve written about exercises developed by a gynecologist that are touted as an advancement on traditional kegels for strengthening muscles down there. Wait a minute — guilty as charged.

So about the underwear: They’re not like the enormous knickers famously sported by Bridget Jones. In fact, they look better than average despite the built-in padding. They’re pretty comfortable, too, at least compared to the host of ridiculous undergarments women wear in the hopes of keeping their physical shortcomings to themselves. I’m looking at you, Spanx.

But then came the Toronto-based Damiva team with their vaginal lubricant, Mae.

Chia Chia Sun came up with Mae, a naturally sourced vaginal lubricant, and a clever strategy.

Former big pharma scientists Chia Chia Sun and Gardiner Smith — partners in business and life — came up with the idea of helping women moisturize vaginal tissue by inserting bullet-shaped “ovules” made of ingredients like cocoa butter and vitamin E oil as an alternative to lubricants containing parabens — controversial cosmetic preservatives — or drying alcohols and petroleum products.

The pair were in Vancouver last week and made for an entertaining interview.

Meeting women across the country has exposed them to intimate details that most people would rather not hear. Handing out samples in a drugstore one day, Sun approached an elegant-looking woman with a European accent who declined her offer saying, “I have turned the faucet off.”

“They don’t understand that the vagina is like any other organ that needs exercise,” says Sun. “It’s use it or lose it.”

That’s particularly relevant in an era when women are starting new relationships in their 50s and 60s — or trying to keep their existing ones from the grave.

“It’s awkward to talk about it,” Smith says, “but it’s worse not to talk about it.

“In a relationship, often a man will blame the woman. If intimacy stops, it’s such a powerful force, it causes severe relationship strains. But if you reverse it, if a man was in pain every time he had intercourse, can you imagine the woman saying, ‘It’s your fault you’re in pain’?”

I’m not sure what patrons sitting around us in a posh hotel restaurant were thinking after that, but Sun summed up her views this way: “The suppression of discussion of these topics makes the problem worse. If women aren’t talking about vaginal dryness with each other or their doctors then they’ll experience it and won’t have any other choice but to turn the faucet off.”

Mixed because there was The good: Who doesn’t like a story about bugs that feed on human blood? And The bad: Who would like to talk to me about it and have their photo taken while having lice removed? That’s right, no one.

I angered a school principal by asking him to confirm that a letter had been sent out to ...

Mixed because there was The good: Who doesn’t like a story about bugs that feed on human blood? And The bad: Who would like to talk to me about it and have their photo taken while having lice removed? That’s right, no one.

I angered a school principal by asking him to confirm that a letter had been sent out to parents warning them that some kids had head lice. “I’ve never been in a school where a letter about head lice has not gone home,” he fumed. “It happens in almost every school, every year.”

Hmm. Even with all those lice crawling around, parents weren’t ringing my phone off the hook to talk about it.

On the bright side, I loved hearing that the ubiquitous teen selfie could be spreading lice from one artfully groomed head to another. That story had been discounted by some health officials in Canada and the U.S., but Yasmin Akhtar, an entomologist at the University of British Columbia, says it’s perfectly possible. And the owner of Lice 911 in the Fraser Valley confirms she has more teen clients now than ever before.

“They’re the ones who are most concerned about privacy,” said Barb Pattison who had no luck getting any of her clients to be photographed for the story. “They don’t want anyone else in the waiting room when they arrive, they don’t want signs outside.”

Yet health officials say head lice have nothing to do with cleanliness — or lack thereof — and diseases. They are just annoying pests. And pests that are harder to destroy now that they’ve built resistance to over-the-counter treatments containing pyrethrins or permethrins, the most common insecticide on the market for head lice.

Not having had lice, I think picking nits sounds like a nice way for a family to have some together time. I’m sure others would disagree.

The best advice I heard — although something that would surely be called child abuse by some — is to shave the kids’ heads. Call it a summertime cooler. Or a fashion statement. Or an act of solidarity with your aunt who’s going through chemotherapy.

Just don’t call it lice.

Here’s the second part to the wonderful Head Lice to Dead Lice public health video. The information about insecticide shampoos is out of date because resistance has increased since this was made, but the rest is still valid, smart and funny.

Did your mother let you lick the spoon? If she did, I’ll bet the thought makes you happy.

Sure, not all memories of cooking together are warm ones – particularly once we’re old enough to have opinions. (“Let’s not over-cook the roast this time, Mum” vs “I’m not eating it raw!” come to mind.) But there’s no doubt that learning to cook for yourself is one of the most useful skills you’ll ever pick up....

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Did your mother let you lick the spoon? If she did, I’ll bet the thought makes you happy.

Sure, not all memories of cooking together are warm ones – particularly once we’re old enough to have opinions. (“Let’s not over-cook the roast this time, Mum” vs “I’m not eating it raw!” come to mind.) But there’s no doubt that learning to cook for yourself is one of the most useful skills you’ll ever pick up.

I’m sure we all know people who missed out on those lessons, now stuck in a rut of salty, often fattening and certainly expensive prepared meals. Or those who learned just enough to cook two meals: will it be a chicken breast and broccoli tonight or ham and scrambled eggs?

So it’s gratifying to see that B.C.’s Hands-on Cook-off contest is in its fifth year, showcasing families who document their kitchen tales in three minutes or less with the hope of winning a cash prize. This year’s deadline is May 15 and all the details are on the Better Together website sponsored by the BC Dairy Association in partnership with the BC Ministry of Health.

I took a look at some of the past winners and saw creative ideas (chickpeas in a sweet snack dip) and just plain fun (the two-time winner Lila Garfinkel liberating a spot prawn). Production qualities are all over the map, so you don’t have to be a Spielberg to win although many are pretty slick.

Here are some previous winners – and the website has more videos – along with all the rules and prize information. A few early entries are already in so you can check out the competition.

The top pick in the multigenerational category (kids and a parent or grandparent) will win $1,000 cash, the runner-up, $500. A youth category added last year lets kids-only show their culinary skills to split a top prize of $500 cash plus $500 cash for their school or youth program.

There are prizes for the viewer’s choice winners, too.

Entries will be judged this year by Anne Marie Tempelman-Kluit, Chef Ned Bell, Chef David Robertson
Kia Robertson, Michael Eckford and Rola Zahr.

There was a sense of relief and open thankfulness among parents whose children had been delivered from the worse torments of OCD because of it. It offered them ways to control time-consuming rituals or disturbing thoughts. I spoke to Jeremy Grey of ...

]]>While researching this story about a relatively new technique for treating obsessive compulsive disorder, I was struck by how parents want to spread the word about exposure and response prevention therapy or ERP.

There was a sense of relief and open thankfulness among parents whose children had been delivered from the worse torments of OCD because of it. It offered them ways to control time-consuming rituals or disturbing thoughts. I spoke to Jeremy Grey of Ladner who described for me — and Sun videographer Jason Payne — what was going on inside his head during his worst years of OCD and how he uses these tools to cope.

Now Grey is attending university and his mother unabashedly thrilled.

Other parents have tragically had different experiences.

Michelle Evans of Cranbrook tells the story of her daughter Kassy in this article written for HeretoHelp, a project of the BC Partners for Mental Health and Addictions Information. It’s a heartbreaking read about watching her child turn from a normal kid into a teen who rarely ate because of fears of contamination, couldn’t bring herself to spend money even if it meant starving and ultimately taking her own life at age 18.

There is also a YouTube version of Evans telling her story to a mental health conference in Kelowna.

Then I remembered hearing an equally disturbing interview on CBC Radio’s The Current in recent weeks when parents Andy Jones and Mary-Lynn Bernard from St. John’s, Newfoundland, described their son’s life which ended this year. Louis Jones-Bernard’s violent intrusive thoughts ultimately became unbearable for him.

Their stories point to the lack of treatment for OCD in areas like B.C.’s Kootenays or Newfoundland which are under-served by mental health professionals. Evans regularly drove her daughter to Calgary for treatment and sent her to a residential program in the U.S. which helped for a while. Jones and Bernard sent Louis to Toronto for help, but to no avail.

The experts I spoke to at a training conference for ERP last weekend in Vancouver say teaching its principles to more counsellors is imperative to keep troubled kids alive. While each case is unique and many illnesses complex, more training for far-flung communities is still a good start. The parents at OCDbc have already helped by raising enough money to sponsor five B.C. therapists to take the course: two from Prince Rupert, one from Smithers and two from Metro Vancouver.

That’s what aerial yoga felt like for me. Well, after the sea sickness wore off.

I recently tried out yet another yoga trend, this one reminding me of the words from a traditional yoga master I had interviewed: “Everybody is starting their own style . . . . It’s becoming like a circus,” Manju Pattabhi Jois told me during a break from conducting an Ashtanga yoga workshop in Whistler last ...

]]>Talk about a head rush.

That’s what aerial yoga felt like for me. Well, after the sea sickness wore off.

I recently tried out yet another yoga trend, this one reminding me of the words from a traditional yoga master I had interviewed: “Everybody is starting their own style . . . . It’s becoming like a circus,” Manju Pattabhi Jois told me during a break from conducting an Ashtanga yoga workshop in Whistler last month.
But some people think that’s a good thing.
Including Prestonne Domareski and Nicole Whitman co-owners of Gravity Yoga in Coquitlam.

Gravity Yoga’s Nicole Whitman in a meditation pose.

They’re not the first yoga studio in Metro Vancouver to install giant fabric slings from the ceiling beams, but they are the first to take such a big gamble on a form of yoga that can be a bit adventurous.

They showed me how to slowly move into some cool upside down poses, but also use the hammock — sometimes called silks after the circus act known as aerial silks — as an aid to move deeper into traditional poses or more difficult positions like handstands.

As you can read in my story (with video), both the Steve Nash Sports Club on Granville Street in Vancouver and Tantra Fitness, about to move to Gastown, started offering aerial yoga a couple of years ago. But it’s a sideline for them compared to the leap Gravity Yoga took in making suspended poses a focus of their studio.

Instructors are trained in two different U.S. schools of aerial yoga both of which were created by show biz aerial performers who were injured and adapted the silks for a new form of exercise.

All I know is that it feels good – for the most part. Remember the fun of hanging upside down on the monkey bars? Aerial yoga can bring out your inner child, said Steve Nash instructor Derek Ralphs as he showed me how to feel like I’m flying.
That was before the pain.

Everyone warned me that some of the poses in which the hammock is wrapped around legs or arms can pinch a bit. This is true. But dedicated aerial yoga enthusiasts either get used to it or choose other poses that don’t bind as much.

In a world where selling yoga pants can make you very, very rich, 69-year-old Manju Pattabhi Jois hearkens back to “old school” gurus — those who choose their students rather than the other way round.

Any big city yoga franchise would blissfully welcome the world-travelling master of Ashtanga yoga, but he’s at a small studio in Whistler this week because its owner made an annual journey to his father’s school in Mysore, a city in

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In a world where selling yoga pants can make you very, very rich, 69-year-old Manju Pattabhi Jois hearkens back to “old school” gurus — those who choose their students rather than the other way round.

Any big city yoga franchise would blissfully welcome the world-travelling master of Ashtanga yoga, but he’s at a small studio in Whistler this week because its owner made an annual journey to his father’s school in Mysore, a city in southern India, for 15 years running.

“You have to have had a relationship with him personally or his father. People have offered him lots of money and he’s not interested. He just goes to his students and I’m a long-term student of his,” Tina James, owner of Loka Yoga in Whistler, said Friday.

James, originally from London, England, said 20 yoga instructors and 40 yoga practitioners filled the spaces for Jois’s five-day visit as soon as it was announced.

People have come from Germany, the U.S., the U.K. — “yoga stalkers,” as she affectionately calls them.

“He is one of the greatest teachers alive now from the old school,” says James. “He’s so not about the money. It’s a joy to work with someone like that because unfortunately today yoga has become awful with that in mind.”

Manju Jois is the son of K. Pattabhi Jois, the founder of the Ashtanga school of yoga, which has transformed into the yogic practice of choice for celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna and Sting.

The death of K. Pattabhi Jois at the age of 93 in 2009 was noted around the world because of his reputation as the master of a form of yoga that incorporates a series of poses performed with slow, rhythmic breathing that has spawned offshoots such as vinyasa, flow and jivamukti yoga in the West.

Manju Jois has made his home in the U.S. since 1975 — in Southern California, of course — and has observed the explosion of yoga’s popularity over the decades.

What’s his take on it now?

Manju Jois adjusting a student’s pose.

“The tradition is missing,” Jois said in a telephone call from Whistler. “Everybody is starting their own style and that is going to destroy the real, traditional yoga. It’s becoming like a circus. My whole goal is to keep tradition, to teach people everything they want to know about yoga.”

That includes breathing exercises and chanting, not just the poses, said Jois.

“When people start practising that, they will get the full benefit of yoga. That’s how I learned from my father and that’s what I try to spread around the world.”

Other descendants of K. Pattabhi Jois are involved in high-end studios in the U.S. which has created some consternation among devotees who see it as crass commercialization. Jois Yoga shalas — or schools — are now located in Encinitas, Calif., Greenwich, Conn., Islamorada, Fla., and Sydney, Australia. The company has also created “a spiritually conscious line of clothing.”

Ashtanga yoga guru K. Pattabhi Jois with son Manju (right) and grandson Sharath, who teaches yoga in Mysore, India, and is a partner in the U.S.-based Jois Yoga schools. The eldest Jois died in 2009.

Manju Jois represents himself with an abbreviated web presence that includes a short biography (he began early morning yoga with his father at age seven; started teaching at 15) and a link to where he will appear next. This week Whistler; next month Halifax, then the U.S. and Brazil; Italy and Germany in June.

“I don’t consider teaching as work because I enjoy being around people and sharing,” said Jois, who travels most of the year. “It gives me a lot of energy.”